Referee: István
Vad (Hungary). Difficult to remember anything he did to quibble about. A fairly
quiet but chilly night for the man in the middle.

Attendance: Initially given as
5,000, Anji later reported a more precise figure of 9,948.

The (over-priced) view from the away
end

That included 73 official away fans and a 30-strong group of Russian
Toon devotees who were originally in a section of
the main stand and then moved to the section adjacent to the away
fans, but still separated by police (see below)

There wasn't a hint of trouble,
although army units looked after "home" fans, with Anji's
home region of Dagestan suffering from ongoing political unrest,
prompting UEFA to ban them from playing Europa League ties at their
own stadium. The
travelling toon contingent were supervised by Moscow police.

Post-match crowd management soviet style meant that those going towards the
stadium metro station were funnelled by two lines of police
towards six mounted policemen facing each other with horses pulled back
just far enough to allow one person at a time to squeeze through,
while trying to avoid the horse's muzzles - and slobber.

There was a fine pre-game montage on the stadium scoreboard to welcome NUFC
followers, which had the soundtrack of the Barrie Brothers Howay
the Lads (1974 FA Cup Final record) and Busker's Home Newcastle,
along with footage of 1950s Wembley FA Cup Final goals, Bob Moncur with
the Fairs Cup
and Supermac's home debut against Liverpool alongside more
contemporary footage.

An interested spectator was former England boss Fabio Capello, now
Russian national team boss. Also in attendance was NUFC MD Derek
Llambias.

Roublemakers
Having managed to arrange visas and transportation to Moscow at short
notice, those 73 toon fans who bought match tickets from NUFC arrived
in Russia to discover that their home counterparts had paid a whopping
£22 less for their entrance to the Luzhniki Stadium on
Thursday.

That's a clear breach of UEFA competition rules and from what we can
gather, at odds with undertakings that Anji had provided to
representatives of the governing body.

There's no suggestion that NUFC made any profit from the tickets they
sold and acted purely as an agent for Anji - we've contacted NUFC with
our observations and requested that they in turn make a protest to
UEFA.

Spot the difference:

Ticket provided to NUFC by Anji with a face value of €30 (£26),
bought by NUFC for that amount and sold on for that amount to
Newcastle supporters:

Ticket bought at the Luzhniki Stadium
on matchday for the Anji section with a face value of 200 Roubles (£4)

Matchday ticket sales took place from
the stadium ticket office pictured below. The price list clearly
includes the ticket price for normal admission and the home sections
offer a superior view to that which Newcastle fans got - being at the
side of the pitch rather than behind a goal.

Matchday photos:

Howay the
Vlads

Luzhniki
Stadium from the Moskva riverbank

Luzhniki
Stadium from across the Moskva River*

The Moskva
River

Inappropriately-named
stadium catering

View from row
ZZ

"Home"
fans

Monument
outside stadium to Spartak fans killed there in 1982

The significance of the monument
explained:

It was following a match in October
1982 that what became known as the Luzhniki Stadium Disaster occurred
(the stadium was renamed, from the ‘Central Lenin Stadium’ to the
‘Luzhniki Stadium’, in 1992). It was not an especially cold
October by Moscow’s standards; but it was in the middle of a cold
spell, on the 20th of the month, with the temperature having fallen
below zero, that Spartak Moscow faced Dutch club HFC Haarlem in the
season’s UEFA Cup.

In addition to and aggravating the cold temperature, the evening of
the 20th October saw much snow, and only 15,000 fans turned up to the
Luzhniki support Spartak – joined by roughly a hundred Haarlem
supporters.

With such an expansive stadium set to hold so few fans, for simplicity
and security’s sake and to keep out those without tickets, only the
East Stand was opened up for the game; and only one exit from the East
Stand was left open for the Spartak supporters.

A goal in the 17th minute from the attacker Edgar Gess saw Spartak
leading the match as it moved into its final minutes and supporters
began to leave the stadium. The game moved into injury time; Sergei
Shvetsov scored Spartak’s second goal of the game; and as some fans
attempted to return to the crowd, a bottleneck formed by the stand’s
open exit.

Militia guards, rather than opening up more exits, focused on
preventing supporters from returning into the stadium, and in the
stampede which followed, exacerbated by the ice and snow which covered
steps and walkways, people were trampled and killed.

The number who died is unclear to this day – the incident was
covered up by the secretive Soviet authorities; bodies were removed
and only returned to the families of the deceased after thirteen days.
Only a few lines appeared in the next day in one local paper, the
Vechernyaya Moscow, which noted the disaster, stating merely that
after the match ‘an incident occurred...some spectators were injured’.

The official death toll suggests that 66 Spartak supporters died that
evening, but other estimates put the toll closer to 340 dead. This
would make the Luzhniki Stadium Disaster the most destructive in
football history.

The few Haarlem fans who did attend the match were allowed to leave
the East Stand via another exit, and they, and their team’s players,
knew little about what happened after the game until an article in the
8th July, 1989 issue of the Soviet daily, Sovetsky Sport, finally
revealed all.

In the meantime, several months after the disaster, Yuri Panchikhin,
the stadium’s deputy manager for just three months at the time of
the incident, was quietly tried and sentenced to eighteen months of
hard labour after ‘confessing’ to bearing feelings of guilt.

In the October days and in the weeks following the disaster, the
authorities prevented the placing of tributes outside Luzhniki
Stadium. In 1992, a monument, paid for by Spartak fans, was finally
unveiled outside the stadium’s East Stand.

In October 2008, a memorial match took place to commemorate the
disaster twenty-five years on. It was organised by Spartak supporters
and by, amongst others, Dick Advocaat and Guus Hiddink, the Dutch
managers of Zenit St. Petersburg and the Russian national team
respectively.

Featuring players who had played for Spartak and Haarlem twenty-five
years previously, money raised from the occasion was given to the
families of the disaster’s victims.

(taken from the empower-sport.com website)

City photos:

St.Basil's
Cathedral, Red Square

The Kremlin

Moscow street
life: Trains, trams, traffic and tower blocks

* Thanks to Stephen Brennan, who climbed the steep hill for this
pic. We didn't.

Goals

Half time: Anji 0 Newcastle 0

Full time: Anji 0 Newcastle 0

We
Said

Alan Pardew

said:

"I
fancy us against anyone at home. If
you're going to go through in Europe you have to win, we've given ourselves
an opportunity at home.

"I'm hoping we get a result on Sunday, that will be important for the
mood and will give me the buoyancy to play my strongest possible team. This
is now an optimum competition for us.

"It was an outstanding performance in conditions that really didn't
suit us - our
technical players played really well and we limited them to just two shots
on target and I'm delighted. We've given ourselves a one-off chance to win
it.

"With our crowd
behind us we are in a good position. Our crowd can make players do strange
things.

"We’re pleased with a
professional job. They are a good side and it was on a difficult pitch
that we aren’t used to. That’s about as good as we could have played
on that. They were right at it and they have some fantastic players but we
were so sound defensively.

"Rob (Elliot) had to make
a couple of saves. Mapou (Yanga-Mbiwa) was magnificent too. It all
bodes well for next Thursday. If you are going to go through we need to
win – now all we need to do is win any way we can. Rob made one
outstanding save down to his right-hand side.

"We had a massive chance with
Hatem. It was just before he went off, normally I would fancy him to take
that.”

Quote of the night however came from ITV "pundit" Jim
Beglin, who displayed a staggering lack of knowledge about the Europa
League by asserting that:
"this is a well-earned point for Alan Pardew's men".

They
Said

Anzi
coach
Zeljko Petrovich:

"First of all I would say that Mr.
Hiddink has lost his voice a little and not feeling well. Today we had a
game against a strong team. This is a very good club from England.

"Newcastle is played as usual, and
the moments we had some. Unfortunately, we have not used them. Lacked the
last pass, and acted in the defence of rival compact. I hope in the second
leg will be more attacking football and we will have more space.

"The fact that Newcastle chose defensive football today, shows respect
for our team. And we are not disappointed with the result. Newcastle acted
very wisely and compact in defence."

The
tie as summarised by Anji:

In the two-legged confrontations during the
playoffs has a known strategy.

To host the first match it contains two important principles: 1) it is very
important not to miss, and 2) it is desirable to score and win. The first task
of "Anji" failed to solve the second failed.

In the battle of the Dagestan team had to face a number of difficulties. If
necessary, beat Makhachkala were without the so-called playmakers: Boussoufa
missed the match through suspension, but Willian was damaged in the first half
of the first inning.

As for the "Newcastle", the English, not really embarrassed, large
forces retreated and did not hide his desire to take away from Moscow draw. The
"Anji" surpassed rival major gaming statistical indicators, but the
victory was not enough.

Most dangerous goal British Eto'o threatened, but all his attacks repelled
goalkeeper "Newcastle". English for the whole fight had a chance to
score, but Ben Arfa could not beat Gabulov.

After the match, the players thanked the fans for their support, which this time
filled the podium much more active than in the game with "Hannover."

It is clear that the final result is not very pleased with the audience, but 0-0
does not consider the negative outcome. "Anji" is not missed, and
therefore, has not only win, but any productive draw in England will bring
Dagestan team to the next round.

Stats

United broke new ground by playing the 131st
competitive European fixture in their history and their first in
Russia. That is the 25th different country they've visited in
66 away games as follows:

NB: We're only counting away trips here, not the number of countries
we've opposed teams from. That distinction means that Georgia and
Turkey don't appear, as we only faced teams from those countries at
SJP in the previous UEFA Cup Group Stage format - there was no away
tie.

(As a guide, teams from 53 different nations entered this
season's Europa League so we're not yet halfway to completing a full
set).

From St.James' Park to Gorky Park, United's
global expeditionary force broke new territory on Thursday night as they made
their debut in Russia - and were confronted by temperatures that were over 40 degrees lower than they'd
experienced in Athens last August.

However it wasn't just the black and whites who were trekking to Moscow, with
Anji undergoing a near 1,000 mile journey from their home city to the UEFA-decreed
"home venue" for this competition.

At an almost eerily empty Luzhniki Stadium - past host of both Olympic Games and
Champions League final - Alan Pardew's side stuck to
their game plan of frustrating Anji and completed the task of keeping a clean
sheet and drawing on the artificial pitch.

And if they were unable to break a plastic pitch hoodoo that stretched back to
misadventures at Luton, Oldham and QPR then they at least set themselves up for
a winnable second leg on turf.

The United boss went for a line-up that included Massadio Haidara at left back
and a "forward" line featuring Gabriel Obertan and Ben Arfa with
Moussa Sissoko and Sylvain Marveaux in support. And with the exception of the
almost criminally awful Obertan, selecting so-called "technical"
players was borne out by a compact and controlled display and relatively few
misplaced passes (Obertan aside).

An unbelievably cagey first half saw both goalkeepers largely untested, although
as half-time approached a long range effort from Samuel Eto'o was pushed over
the bar by Rob Elliot. There was little else worthy of note as both teams struggled to control
the ball on the artificial surface and play continually got bogged down in midfield
with free-kicks often halting the flow of the game.

Anji lost £35m signing Willian in the 23rd minute when he fell awkwardly by the
goal line after an excellent challenge from Haidara, then wincing as he took the
resultant corner. He was replaced by giant forward Lacina Traore but James Perch
and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa marshalled the big man well before the break.

Just after the hour mark Eto'o tried his luck from outside the box again and
Elliot did well to get down low and turn the ball wide of his right hand
upright. From the corner, Oleg Shatov went close with a controlled volley from the edge
of the box but then the visitors started to exploit some spaces opening up as
Anji looked to gain a first leg lead and began to tire - inevitable given that
their domestic season has been on a break since December.

Vurnon Anita and Obertan linked up well
and
Hatem Ben Arfa almost made a goalscoring return
to the first team, trying to chip 'keeper Vladimir Gabulov when he was slotted in, midway
through the second half but the Anji stopper stood tall and easily saved, as
United spurned their best chance of a scoreless first leg.

That was the end of Ben Arfa's evening and although he showed glimpses of what
we'd been missing, he looked very rusty and understandably short of match
fitness. His replacement, Shola Ameobi, looked even more leggy and tried to cut inside
when he could have shot from the left side of the box.

Steven Taylor came on for Anita as Perch moved into midfield and immediately
shook the hand of Eto'o, who he had first met some nine years earlier on his
first team debut when the Cameroonian forward played for Real Mallorca.

A precious away goal would have been a fantastic return from our first Russian
excursion but a clean sheet was still a notable achievement and sets up the
second leg nicely. Hopefully, a 40,000+ crowd can inspire the black and whites to secure a place in
the quarter-finals next week at Gallowgate.